Mike Lister

Thanks Andrew, that's been posted here a number of times.

There's lots of others here who are putting in outstanding effort and actually being extremely helpful.

"if we have unassessable income remitted, do we ignore get a tax id number?" The TRD Code clearly says you do not need a TIN. "do we ignore filling out forms that have no place for unassessable income?" If the form doesn't ask for it, what choice is there. "do we have to provide proof of our govt pensions taxed already?" You only need to provide proof, if you are subsequently audited or it is requested.

All entirely credible and possible, I have no challenge. But coming back to your earlier statement: "Thailand only taxes remittances & only has the right to audit what you remit, they cannot go digging through the whole history of transactions". What if in your most recent post, you didn't buy back the shares and simply sold them and declared them as savings, which at that point is what they are.......does the TRD still only have the right to audit what you remit?

"Thailand only taxes remittances & only has the right to audit what you remit, they cannot go digging through the whole history of transactions". As you say, if you apply that same logic to any asset in the home country, all you have to do is sell the asset, pay the home country tax and convert it to savings, that's one possible answer. But does that same scenario apply to income also? Bank the income and and convert it to savings, after which it can be remitted as savings, free of Thai tax. Hmmm, it's very appealing but that picture doesn't look right!

Assistant Professor Preyanuch is very good plus her English is excellent.

Speaking solely for myself.....I've only been doing direct deposit for two years and I filed returns for both those years.

Fair enough, it's your decison.

Nope. Defamation laws in Thailand are such that it doesn't matter if what was said is true or not, only that it was said and it caused damage as a result.

Please go back and read again the message i posted on this subject. There has not been a total ban or prohibition introduced on Gift Tax discussions. The word "ban" was first introduced in a now redacted inappropriately worded post by another member and you have now introduced the word prohibition for the first time! I trust you will be more diligent in your assessment of tax related documentation! I have merely asked for members co-operation in moving the narrative away from Gift Tax and ways to avoid paying Thai tax. This is because we do not want to see the debate make the short leap from discussing avoidance, to describing evasion plus we do not want to be seen as the go to place to obtain tax avoidance measures, legal or otherwise. This has been done for several other reasons, including complaints from several members that the thread had been hijacked and a concern that the emphasis of the thread was no longer appropriate ....I shared similar concerns. If you wish to have a debate on this subject, please PM me or Admin with your concerns. But as also stated previously, I see no reason to have a public debate and instead the thread and its participants should just move on. As far as best use of my time is concerned: As I said in great detail recently, I have no intention of doing any research into Gift tax cases or anything similar, I leave that to the experts in such things. I appreciate you cooperation.

Don't forget there is a large segment of the expat community who have pensions remitted directly to Thailand, in the month they are paid. I receive my UK State pension that way and also my US SSc income, both by direct deposit. Many of those people will use the income method to obtain their visa's, I do not and am on the 400k in the bank method. So when you say, "most of us" I think it's more appropriate to say, "some of us". If you have pre 1 January 2024 savings and you have a bank statement showing the amounts on that date on near to, you are in the clear to remit those funds, why wouldn't you be? And, I don't know what the average statistics are but if 100 people remit funds to Thailand, and file a tax return, what percentage do you think will get singled out for audit? I'm guessing perhaps one!

A fella's got to be fair and reasonable about this. It's not a half baked mess and it's not a so called tax! It's a single adjustment to one of the tax rules, that's all. The half baked mess part is the panic and scurrying that many foreigners have created that results from their very recent awareness that they too have to pay tax in Thailand and have been required to do so all along. That coin is now dropping!

I think one of the things I'm seeing here is individual risk tolerance. We have one poster who takes zero risk on this and insists on seeing everything in black and white first before he acts and even then he's probably going to expect a worst case outcome, a sort of belt and braces combined with the glass is half empty. I think ultimately this person is a pessimist by nature. There's another poster who takes the opposite approach which is , "give it a try, you've nothing to loose", not necessarily an optimist, more of a, what the heck, kind of approach. Most people sit somewhere in the middle of those two positions, I know I do. If I wanted to buy a home here, I think I'd satisfy myself that I could prove the funds were savings and exempt and then do it. I think waiting for absolute proof that leaves me feeling all warm and fuzzy, probably isn't realistic in Thailand because it may never come.

"the RD hotline told poster 4myr he would still have to pay taxes on remitted income, even if he only stayed 179 days in the year of remittance". Walk into any upcountry branch of any bank in Thailand and ask if you can open a bank account and you'll get different answers from everyone you visit, despite those rules being laid out crystal clear in the bank headquarters rules set. Ask ten people here the same question and you'll likely get ten different answers. It's the way it is, it's part of the landscape. That doesn't mean the person that 4myr spoke to was correct. If you have a reasonable audit trail of statements over time, from your remitting bank, I'm pretty certain that will be sufficient, that's my personal opinion and it's the basis on which I am working personally.

I think that's extreme. In practise, I doubt the average TRD person will look at remitted savings and wonder where they came from five years earlier, would you? I wouldn't, the further you move away from today, the less likely a check will be made. I think this is especially true when the taxpayer is older or retired and has a consistent income track record....in other words, the sniff test. If the taxpayer is younger or perhaps even middle aged with inconsistent revenue flows, the idea of nomad working and untaxed income would be prominent in my thinking. But pensioners and retirees, I don't think so.

Taking it to even greater extremes, a Capital Gain that is sold and converted to savings in the home country, can't realistically be viewed as being earned income, twenty or thirty years hence. Ten years hence? Doubtful! How about five years hence? I'd be very surprised! If the same year, sure there's a case to be made, so I guess the answer is somewhere between one and five years....maybe.

As is the line between brilliance and insanity.

Well spotted! Yes, bed and breakfasting is a good approach to reducing CG liability, it's completely legal and is all done outside of Thailand and doesn't involve any form of manipulation. But if you don't go that route and instead you decide to sell those shares, how long after they become savings will the TRD regard them as savings? JG started to mention this earlier. If the income from the shares is tax paid in the home country, those proceeds should be regarded as savings straight away but will the TRD view things the same way.

I couldn't agree more. Which is why I believe very very strongly that we need to get the Introduction to Thai Tax document right and get that information into as many hands as possible. That means getting these discussions right, along with peoples behaviour and attitude. It means putting an end to the sniping and false challenges and actively working to find answers. It's one thing to have a theoretical and cerebral debate about shop talk or your hobby (tax) but it's something else entirely to try and educate the membership with as much fact as we can possibly derive from different sources. It's not impossible to do that but it takes effort and discipline.

Capital gains treatment is not entirely clear yet but there are two ways that are safe. The first is to sell the property before moving here and convert that equity into savings which, as long as any interest on them is kept separate, will be free of Thai tax. The other option is to sell the property and make sure you are not tax resident in Thailand in the year the proceeds are remitted to Thailand. In a worst case scenario, that means spending not more than 179 days here in a tax year before spending the rest of the year somewhere else. If you do those things, there is no Thai tax.

No!!! (not yes above) Why would you have to explain anything to anyone? I imagine you're going to buy your condo with savings or pre 1 January 2024 income? In which case, why would you even need to file a tax return? As others have already said and has been quoted several times......don't try and imagine how the Revenue thinks, just look at how the rules are written, it's very black and white in that regard.

Not if the money they use is savings that are not assessible, rather than income. Most people have savings, a retiree who's fronting 800k for a visa is unlikely to use income for that purpose. Anyway, any income earned before 1 January 2024 is tax free anyway. I can see you still haven't read the link I gave you!

And so you should my lad, not everyone gets the VIP treatment. 🙂

Far too many questions for which we don't yet have answers, we really don't know yet how this will play out in practise. I don't think there's any chance of things happening the way you've described. "Penalties for owing too much tax at year"....no chance, that requires an effective tax at source system that doesn't exist here. I also don't think the Revenue will be scouring the databases for people who have stayed for more than 180 days, Thailand has a buoyant tourism industry, there are far too many people coming and going. What I think is probable in the future is that long term visa renewals will require some sort of tax clearance certificate from the revenue, before the person can be granted a visa extension or can leave the country. That sort of system will require visa holders to file tac returns and do some tax accounting each year. That system already exists for some visa categories but requires Revenue to put processes in place to allow it to happen before it is used more widely. The way I personally imagine this will play out is, the Revenue will wait until next year to see how many more people file tax returns as a result of the new law, I would expect there to be a natural increase but I can't gauge how large. The Revenue objective is to increase the number of people in the tax net and to increase the tax take. If it appears that those things are growing and there is momentum, that will probably be seen as a win for the Revenue who may then go on to take additional measure. I imagine their worst fear is that the numbers don't change, this is because most people ignore the Revenue and don't see them as the same sort of threat or risk that people in the West do. If that happens, expect Tax Clearance Certificates to be implemented quite quickly.

The simple fact is, people want to know! Even you want to know, despite saying you don't read the posts, I see you reading every morning in the long tax thread! So no, it's not about increasing posts, it's about being informed.